Japan's 'polka dot queen' artist Yayoi Kusama passes away at 97

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Japan’s Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists, has passed away aged 97, her company said Thursday, triggering tributes from around the world.

The “polka dot queen” channelled hallucinations and battles with mental health into vibrant art featuring her trademark dots, nets and infinity motifs over a career spanning decades and continents.

“Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry,” a statement said, announcing her death on August 14.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” it added.

Born in 1929 to a wealthy and conservative family, Kusama began producing her unique signature art aged 10.

“One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red flower pattern on a desk, I saw the same red flower pattern all over the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room, and covered my body,” she wrote in her autobiography.

After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the United States in the late 1950s, and — helped by Georgia O’Keeffe — made a splash in New York’s avant-garde scene.

Despite facing discrimination as a Japanese woman, she won fame for bold, big paintings and provocative 1960s “happenings” featuring body painting and polka dots.

She also launched a fashion line, established a “Church of Self-Obliteration” and styled herself the “High Priestess of Polka Dots” to officiate at a gay wedding.

Returning to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived — and worked — for the rest of her life.

Soul ‘explosion’

Instantly recognisable in her bright red wig and bold spotted outfits, her fame enjoyed a renaissance from the 1980s.

Her infinity rooms, pumpkin sculptures — including one on Japan’s “art island” Naoshima — and immersive installations still attract crowds and have sold for millions of dollars.

“It’s a great quality to be weird and to express yourself no matter what,” Velislava Nuneva, a 21-year-old college student from Bulgaria, told AFP.

Outside the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, Nuneva said she was inspired by how the artist managed to succeed in the male-dominated art world of New York.

Yasuko Minami, 58, called Kusama “someone who projected her inner soul in her works like an explosion”.

“She expressed herself honestly,” Minami told AFP.

Students Hibiki Karasawa, 20, and Hinata Sakamoto, 19, have visited Naoshima island and seen Kusama’s yellow polka-dot pumpkin in its setting by the sea.

“I feel her work was something that even those who may not be familiar with art can appreciate, with the vibrant designs and bold use of colour, or turning something like a pumpkin into a work of art,” Karasawa told AFP.

“She conveyed her world view in a very unique way.”

“I love the way she uses colours,” said Sakamoto. “Vivid yellow and red. You see it and immediately you know it’s Kusama san’s work.”

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, called the artist a “true visionary who showed us the power of boundless imagination”.

“Yayoi Kusama’s creativity pushed the art world forward and left behind a brighter, more vibrant world for us all,” Cook said on X.

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